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Storyline

Two men of high rank are both wooing the beautiful and famous equestrian acrobat Stella. While Stella ignores the jeweler Hirsch, she accepts Count von Waldberg's offer to follow her home, where she falls in his arms. At her party some days later Hirsch turns up uninvited. He says he wants to give Stella a piece of jewelry, but she repulses his advances. When Waldberg sees this he knocks Hirsch down. Hirsch challenges him to a duel by cards. Waldberg loses all his money, and in the end also has to sign a promissory note on 85.000, which should be paid within 24 hours. To help Waldberg solve his debt Stella goes to Hirsch to receive the brooch he has promised her. While he turns away, she steals a precious necklace from him, but he happens to see the theft in a mirror. He tails her to a park, where he sees Stella giving the necklace to Waldberg. Hirsch tells Stella to come to him at midnight, if she wants him to be silent about the theft. When Waldberg finds out that Stella is going to... Written by
Maths Jesperson {maths.jesperson1@comhem.se}

User Reviews

In the film "Den Sorte Drom", three of the most important people of Danish film-making were reunited - the great actress Asta Nielsen, the handsome fellow Valdemar Psilander and the worthy film director Urban Gad. This is a film that efficiently relates the story of Damen Stella, a horsewoman who performs in a circus and who arise great passion in men.

Due to her charms, Damen Stella will be wooed by two admirers - an old jeweler and a young Count. Damen Stella finally chooses the second one, an act that means that the horsewoman has a lot of horse sense.

The choice, based upon love, still immediately causes jealousy and suspicions between the two lovers. It becomes the cause of many disputes which are decided finally when all arguments are settled by the playing of a card duel between the two suitors (MEIN GOTT!!!.. what happened with the duels at dawn in misty sceneries?!... there's something rotten in Denmark, indeed ). The young Count loses the play and has to pay a high amount of money that he doesn't have (ah, the complicated economic situation of the aristocracy!... ) to the jeweler and at once.

Obscure dealings will arise between the horsewoman, the jeweler and the Count. Central in this is a necklace, a jewel that will be finally be the cause of a tragic ending in this special love triangle.

Herr Urban Gad directed the film, as always, in an efficient and accurate way for a film characteristic of a melodrama from the teens of the 20th century. Gad got the help of a larger than life Damen Nielsen and even with Herr Psilander just playing Herr Psilander. (As a curiosity, at the end of a torrid love scene between the horsewoman and the Count, it is possible to be see how the actors cut the scene in a humorous way, a kind of false shot that it wasn't eliminated in the film.)

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count has to review the jewel case of my German fat fräulein in order to survey its content, lest there is some lacking.